Marcopolis presents the Saudi Arabia Report focused on the investments, doing business, economy and other topics featuring interviews with key executives. The sectors under review in this issue are industry, real-estate, ICT, investments, banking sector, telecom sector and many more.

Almarai

Almarai was established in Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1977 as a partnership between the Irish agri-foods pioneer Alastair McGuckian and his brother Paddy, and Prince Sultan bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Kabeer. Today, Almarai is the largest vertically integrated dairy company in the world.

During the early 1990s, Almarai entered a period of restructuring and reinvestment that took it from a decentralized to a centralized structure. Five decentralized processing plants were replaced with the a central processing plant. Also ten small scattered dairy farms were replaced with four large dairy farms in Al Kharj in the central region.

2005 brought many developments for Almarai, a second larger central processing plant was commissioned, incorporating a new cheese plant, two new super-farms were commissioned and Almarai a publicly listed company that has around 70,000 shareholders.

Almarai is currently one of the largest listed companies in Saudi Arabia with market capitalization of over US$ 14 billion. Almarai is the largest integrated dairy foods company in the world with an unrivaled reputation synonymous with delivering excellence and quality across its entire range of products. Currently operating across the gulf region, Almarai employs over 35,000 employees servicing some 50,000 retail outlets with a turnover that exceeded $3.36 billion in 2014. An aggressive expansion program together with acquisitions in new vertical markets including poultry process have created exciting opportunities to join a dynamic multinational team dedicated to furthering growth plans for the group.

Riyadh itself is fast becoming a cosmopolitan hub for people from all over the world with its growing opportunities, year round sunshine and world class malls and is currently experiencing considerable growth when compared with the rest of the world economy: 62% of Saudi Arabian firms increased headcount in 2012; salaries increased by an average 6%; the highest rate of job creation in the GCC creating considerable opportunities for career growth and wealth.